Posted
by
Soulskill
on Sunday April 18, 2010 @11:28AM
from the think-of-is-as-encouraging-you-to-find-a-new-hobby dept.

ocean_soul writes "More than three weeks after the release of The Settlers 7, with the controversial 'always on-line' DRM, a lot of people still can't connect to Ubisoft's DRM servers. The forum threads where people can post if they are unable to connect keep growing daily. One reason for the lack of fixes or responses from support seems to be that the people responsible were on vacation during the Easter holiday, despite the promise of 24/7 monitoring of the servers. The moral of this story seems to be that it is a bad idea to buy a game just before a major holiday."
Or perhaps that it's wise to avoid games with such DRM altogether. So far, Ubisoft hasn't shown any sign that they're reconsidering the requirement of a constant connection. They've recently said it's "vital" to the success of their games and promised that their DRM would "evolve and improve" over time.

The only way to implement secure and effective DRM may be through the use of server handshaking. I understand that. But these publishers really need to understand that not everyone has a connection all of the time. Even when customers do have a connection it can be faulty and thus cause them problems.

*works in aerospace as a CAD/CAM draftsman; can answer authoritatively.

BOEING uses Dassault Systemes Catia V5 R19, as of the time of this posting.

It has been cracked and released on Pirate Bay as of R19 service pack 4.

The crack in question exploits the server based authentication DLL, by replacing it with one that automagically returns "authenticated" for whatever license the local client is requesting. (thus, no authentication server is needed at all.)

The name of the hacked file is called JS0GROUP.DLL

A pirate installation of this sort provides the user with over 1 million dollars worth of CAD/CAM power, in equivalent licensing fees.

(Catia is a modular "I can do just about anything, DAMNIT!" CAD/CAM/PLM package. It has workbenches for doing everything from sheetmetal design, to rapid prototyping, to designing skyscrapers, to designing and diagnosing plumbing/pipe routing, planning infrastructure and space requirements for industrial robots, and even electronics engineering. The pirate dll activates "ALL" workbenches.)

Long story short: The DRM (Licensing server with expensive licenses required.) has been broken, and has been broken for quite some time.

If you're talking about VAC-banning then you're just factually incorrect. If not then I'd be interested to know of an example, because I've never heard of somebody's entire Steam account being banned. Phished, perhaps, but not banned.

Did not work out, it went into the top 10 and went out straightly after 1-2 weeks in every country, in case of AC2 the DRM really hurt the sales, it probably would be in every top 10 list still if it had not such a draconian non working DRM.And btw. the game is fully cracked as someone has posted there is a full server emu!It took ubisoft millions to develop the DRM it took the crackers 4 weeks to write a fully working emulator:-)

What? As far as I know, Valve has never required a third-party dev to remove their DRM before selling their games on Steam. For example, the Steam version of Bioshock (the first one) kept its SecuROM DRM - even though it didn't have a disc to check.

Do you have any examples? (I don't mean examples of third-party devs voluntarily removing their own DRM for the Steam version without being asked, I mean examples of Valve explicitly telling a third party they had to remove their DRM before they could sell their game on Steam.)

To be fair, that game has very little to do with Steam. Pick up a copy of Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike: Source (Valve games, they own and operate Steam) and get back to me if you have any DRM problems.

I've literally *NEVER HEARD* of anybody having Steam DRM issues aside from the general philosophical one with the concept. Literally NOT ONCE have I heard of somebody having a problem with Valve's specific implementation. But again, COD MW2 uses their own DRM.

Look, I'm completely against DRM. What's with the cognitive dissonance then? Steam/Valve's DRM isn't one-sided. It's not so much DRM as running the game like a service. If I do a reinstall of my OS, get a new computer, or even go to a friend's house I can log on to Steam, download all my games, and be playing in an hour or so. No trouble. I can even have my (encrypted) games on literally dozens of computers, as long as I'm only playing online with one at a time. It's not even too much trouble to play offline on all of them simultaneously. It works offline (to anyone having trouble: go offline while online at least once, and it'll be fine later). And when the Mac version comes out (supposedly later this month), I'll get the ports without needing to spend a cent.

DRM sucks largely because they take away rights I used to have, while breaking my computer. And the legitimate customers have more trouble than the pirates.Steam's DRM is the opposite: I get an unlimited license to any game I've purchased, across any and all computers, as long as only one is used at a time. It doesn't impact my computer in the slightest. And while there are noSteam versions of most games, you can't connect to VAC servers, so you're flooded with cheaters.

Admittedly a good bit of this depends on Valve not being dicks. But they have such tremendous good will at the moment, and a long history of respecting their customers, that I can't imagine them changing their stance.